Lucy Chen Joins the Board of Directors of Catalyst Youth Network
OAKLAND, CA — July 28, 2026 — After four years on its advisory board, Lucy Chen has joined the Board of Directors of Catalyst Youth Network, an Oakland nonprofit serving teens who are too often shut out of opportunity.
Catalyst was founded in 2020 to close resource gaps for Oakland youth. Its programs include paid internships, a leadership fellowship, and a youth center in West Oakland.
For Chen, the paid part is the point. "Every internship we run is paid. Not because that's generous, but because unpaid isn't actually an option for a lot of these students," she said. "If the internship doesn't pay, the summer goes to whoever needs the bus fare covered less."
This summer Catalyst placed 50 paid interns, its largest group yet, at Caltrans, an entrepreneurship lab, a legal fellowship at UC Berkeley, and other sites. Some of the students came to Catalyst after a program they had counted on elsewhere closed. On August 5, the interns ran their own showcase night in Oakland, presenting what eight weeks of work had built.
About Lucy Chen
Lucy Chen, MS, DTM, is an executive coach, keynote speaker, and award-winning author. She founded Gifted Coaching and Gifted Books, an independent press that helps first-time authors, many of them immigrants and women, publish their stories. Her books include Build Resilience: Live, Learn, and Lead and Good Moms DO Cry, winner of an International Impact Book Award. Before coaching, she spent more than two decades in engineering, risk management, and fintech. She is a founding member of the San Francisco chapter of Chief and of SiliconRoshi AI Academy, and a board member of Catalyst Youth Network.
For more information, visit GiftedCoaching.info or contact Lucy at hello@giftedcoaching.info.
